In the media frenzy surrounding Special Counsel Mueller rare statement slamming Buzzfeed's "report" that Trump had instructed his former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, an important development in the US-China saga quietly snuck under the radar. Because one day after the WSJ reported a since denied story that the US, or rather Steven Mnuchin, is seeking to lift China tariffs (to boost the market), and on the same day that Bloomberg reported China had offered a path to slash its US trade surplus by importing up to $1 trillion more in US goods, Bloomberg also reported late in the day, that the Trump administration is preparing an executive order that would "significantly restrict Chinese state-owned telecom companies from operating in the U.S. over national security concerns", the latest escalation at the heart of the ongoing US-China feud, namely China's ongoing technological theft, pardon, "transfer."

While the order, which hasn’t yet been presented to the president, does not explicitly mention Chinese telecom giants such as Huawei Technologies or ZTE by name, and would not outright ban U.S. sales by the firms, it would give greater authority to the Commerce Department to review products and purchases by companies connected to "adversarial countries", including China, reported Bloomberg citing "people familiar with the matter."